Bridge

Bridge
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Intrigue
Illustrator(s)	Harald Lieske
Card text
+1 Buy + This turn, cards (everywhere) cost less.

Bridge is an Action card from Intrigue that reduces the costs of all cards. It is similar to a terminal Silver if you only buy one card, but can be very powerful if you play many Bridges and make use of all of their Buys.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• All cards, including cards in the Supply, in play, in decks, and in hands, cost less for the rest of this turn, but not less than .
• For example after playing Bridge, you could buy a Gold with , since Gold only costs ; you could Upgrade Copper to Estate, since Copper still costs , but Estate costs ; you could use Ironworks to gain a Duchy, since Duchy only costs .
• This is cumulative; if you play two Bridges (or the same Bridge twice via Throne Room), cards will cost less.

Other Rules clarifications

• The effect of Bridge does not depend on the Bridge card itself being in play—only on how many times you've played it this turn. Thus if you use Procession on a Bridge, costs are still reduced (by ) even though the Bridge ends up in the trash.

Strategy

Bridge is a strong, cheap payload card that becomes extremely powerful when played multiple times in a turn. It’s often centralising if the Kingdom offers the necessary engine components to enable multiple Bridge plays per turn, since its three effects (+, +Buy, and cost reduction) all interact with one another to make it significantly easier to purchase good cards. Ultimately, this can lead to a megaturn in which Provinces are reduced to a negligible price and you also have enough Buys to purchase the entire pile, or however many remain in it, and end the game.

When beginning to build a deck with Bridge, it’s important to consider whether you’re aiming for a megaturn or not. The availability of villages alongside strong draw and/or trashing is critical to support multiple plays of this terminal stop card; the presence of Throne Room variants that allow you to play a single Bridge multiple times, especially King's Court and Royal Carriage, also makes such a strategy considerably more attractive. If a megaturn is viable, an early Bridge is likely to be a good plan even though you may not be able to make use of the +Buy yet; it effectively functions as a terminal Silver at first, while getting you started on contesting the Bridge pile. Another good use case for Bridge in the early game is when there are cheap cards that you’re likely to want many copies of, such as Border Guard or Lackeys, which makes the early +Buy more valuable; this can be the case even if the Kingdom does not support an eventual megaturn, e.g. because it limits you to one terminal Action play per turn. Conversely, Bridge is often a poor choice in a money deck, where it may never progress beyond acting as a terminal Silver.

When adopting a Bridge megaturn strategy, the details of your endgame plan may be dependent on other features of the Kingdom (e.g. the nature of any non-Bridge payload), but it’s likely that you’ll also need to be flexible and responsive to your opponents’ behaviour. If you can play seven Bridges, just generated by other means would be enough to allow you to buy all of the Provinces in a two-player game. However, in practice this may be impossible (e.g. because your opponent contests the Bridge pile) and/or unnecessary (e.g. if your opponent takes two Provinces, in which case six would be enough to win). Depending on how the game develops, there’s also a strong possibility that you’ll be able to achieve a pile-out win sooner than you would be able to take all the Provinces. In all these scenarios, alertness to your opponent’s potential capacity to end the game on their next turn is also crucial, as with any megaturn strategy.

Bridge generally is stronger in Kingdoms with a few particular effects. As well as Throne Room and its ilk, Bridge synergises well with draw-to-x cards (especially Hunting Lodge and Cursed Village, which also provide a village effect), since both work best with minimal Treasure payload. Good trashing is a strong requirement for this approach to work well. A couple of cards make it possible to set up a megaturn even in the absence of other engine components, most notably the Royal Carriage / Bridge combo; the Native Village / Bridge combo is also possible, though typically not a very strong monolithic strategy.

In contrast, Bridge can be more awkward to use if the Kingdom contains an important Event that you’ll want to buy frequently, an expensive Project or one-shot Event that you'll want to buy in the midgame, or useful cards with a component to their price, as Bridge’s cost reduction doesn’t affect any of these and keeping other forms of payload around may be suboptimal. It's also important to be aware of Bridge's impact on effects that care about the prices of cards, such as trash for benefit, certain on-gain effects (e.g. with Haggler), or draw such as that of Patrician or Seer.

External strategy articles

Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's current views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information or give historical perspective. Caveat emptor.

• theory's 2012 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Buy + All cards (including cards in players’ hands) cost less this turn, but not less than .	Intrigue 1st Edition	July 2009
		+1 Buy + This turn, cards (everywhere) cost less, but not less than .	Intrigue 2nd Edition Intrigue 2nd Edition (2021 printing)	October 2016
		+1 Buy + This turn, cards (everywhere) cost less.		June 29, 2022

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	橋樑 (pron. qiáoliáng)
Czech	Most
Dutch	Brug			+1 Aanschaf + Alle kaarten (ook die in je hand) kosten deze beurt minder, maar nooit minder dan .	Eerste editie (2009)
Finnish	Silta
French	Pont
German	Brücke			+1 Kauf + Alle Karten (auch die Karten, die die Spieler auf der Hand halten) kosten in diesem Zug weniger, niemals jedoch weniger als .	(2009) one or more other versions listed here
	Brücke			+1 Kauf + In diesem Zug kosten alle Karten (überall) weniger, aber nicht weniger als .	2. Edition (2021)
	Brücke			+1 Kauf + In diesem Zug kosten Karten (überall) weniger.
Hungarian	Híd
Italian	Ponte
Japanese	橋 (pron. hashi)			+1 購入 + このターン、(サプライ以外も含めた)すべてのカードのコストは下がる (未満にはならない)。
Korean	다리 (pron. dali)
Norwegian	Bro
Polish	Most			+1 zakup + Wszystkie karty (wliczając karty na ręce u graczy) kosztują w tej kolejce o mniej, lecz nie mniej niż .
Russian	Мост (pron. most)			+1 Покупка + В этом ходу все карты (везде) стоят на дешевле, но не меньше .
Spanish	Puente

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

I tried something like this in the murky past for the main set, and decided it was too strong. I had a weaker version that I later tried on Woodcutter (it only made the 2nd copy of a card that you bought in the same turn cheaper), but decided that was too confusing for the main set. A while later I had just stolen a card from the 6th set for the main set, and needed a replacement. This idea sounded like it might not be trouble after all, and in fact it wasn't. I then stole this from that set for this one when I needed another +Buy card.

Bridge makes all cards cheaper, not just ones in the supply. This was to prevent problems in weird situations. I am not sure the kind of thing you'd need to get those problems will ever happen, but I knew that this way of doing it meant I was safe. This also allows some unusual combos to work.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Intrigue Cards

Retrospective

I would consider whether I like Bridge as is, in its Throne-able glory, or if I would rather phrase them the way I think such stuff in general should be phrased, like Highway etc.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, What Donald X. Might Do With a Dominion Time Machine

Wording

At any given moment I had to word a card and had some idea as to what wording I liked best, and for Intrigue I put in that "everywhere." Possibly I was thinking "this is the first expansion, let's be a little friendlier," or "I am already saving words cutting out that other text, I have room for this word" or something.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

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